


I Never Saw Him Coming

by zombie_socks



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: First Meetings, Songfic, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 12:24:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14496927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombie_socks/pseuds/zombie_socks
Summary: Soulmates are a fairy tale... or so Natasha thought.LEVV's Arrow came on my Spotify playlist and it just screamed Clintasha





	I Never Saw Him Coming

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I saw Infinity War. I'm ignoring it. What's new? 
> 
> Link to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEnxa2DxmNQ

Arrow- LEVV

 

**I met a foreign man in the west.**

 

She didn’t get to Europe much these days. Most of her missions took her to far off places with crooked men and their crooked money. Not that Europe was excused from such villainy; it most certainly wasn’t. But its corners touched boarders with her past, put her too close to prying eyes. The rainforests of South America or the desserts of Africa or the harsh urban sprawl of Asia kept her better hidden.

It was a simple enough mission: attend the mark’s elegant ball at his estate in Austria, lure him away, take him out. Easy money.

That is until she caught sight of her tail.

He appeared somewhere between shopping for a gown for the evening, and meeting up with connections provided by her client at a café on the square. He was good, as she only got fleeting glances, glimpses out of the corner of her eyes. She didn’t know what he looked like, but she could feel his eyes watching her.

Her mission was almost complete when it went to hell. The mark was out, drowning in his own blood, when a nosey housekeeper poked her head in and noticed the Black Widow standing there, knife in hand. She screamed, calling attention from the audience still lingering downstairs.

The Widow ran.

She exited out a window at the end of the hallway, leaping to the low roof of the house staff’s quarters below. She tucked and rolled, snagging the hem of her gown on a loose roofing nail. It cut into her leg but she ignored the pain.

She stumbled through the alleyway between the estate and accompanying garage. Pointing a gun at one of the valets she ordered him to give her the keys to the vehicle he currently held in his hand.

Using the ruined hem of her dress to form a bandage around her bleeding leg, she sped off, getting only as far as the edge of the estate grounds before feeling the pop and pull of something taking out her tires. She caught sight of him in the rearview mirror. Tall, built, and carrying a bow.

But it was the glimpse of his blue eyes that positively rattled her.

 

**I felt a strange fire in my chest-**

**like moonshine in the morning light of the sun**

 

She’d heard tell of this fire in closed little circles of girls braiding each other’s hair and sharpening knives. They fought for bread in the morning and froze at night, slaughtered each other as ordered during the day. But there were moments in between, breaths of dawn and dusk where information could be traded and it was in one such twilight she heard the murmurs about soulmates, about the glow that burned from their chests upon gazing into each other's eyes.

She believed it to be another fairy tale, a myth like the rusalka, a rumor like the lost princess.

But now it burned and pulled and grasped, clutching at her relentlessly, making her eyes water, her throat raw. She looked down expecting fire to illuminate the dark dashboard before her, some visual indication that the sun had settled in her chest. But there was only the softest, palest glow of warm red light, a candle, a feeble flame so easily put out. How could it hurt so much?

A painful groan marred the air.

At first she thought it was from her but one look out the mirror showed the archer doubled over in the same pain she felt.

No.

It couldn’t be.

 

**I never saw him coming.**

 

The stories were true.

Her heart was aglow.

And so was his.

**I ran from him into the forest**

**He had no fear of depth or darkness.**

**Like a lion on the open plains he pursued**

 

 

Reacting on adrenaline, on instinct, she opened the car door and burst forward into the wooded grounds that surrounded the dead mark’s mansion. With the light pouring from her chest there was no hiding, but she hoped to outrun him. She’d dodge this destiny, this horrifying reality that had crashed upon her. She was no one’s, belonged to no one. Not Ivan or Madame or the Red Room. She was nobody’s and there was no way in hell she was going to relinquish her freedom to some stranger sent to kill her.

But he was skilled, this archer. He followed her through the leaf-covered ground and autumnal chill, trailed her through the trees and underbrush with the ease of a seasoned tracker. He was a hunter, she realized. And she would _not_ be his prey.

 

She had a trap laid, though primitive. Her eyes scanned the forest floor from her position in the boughs. She spied his glow carefully approaching hers and tested the wire coiled around her hands. She’d slice his throat and hide the evidence of their connection with blood.

The candlelight of his soulglow came closer, closer. She could make out the silhouette of the man now. She narrowed her eyes.

A twig snapped behind her, diverting her attention for a split second, a half-breath. But it was enough.

The hunter saw her. And he aimed.

 

 

**I never saw him coming.**

 

 

The arrow through her shoulder knocked her off balance and sent her tumbling to the brush below. But a fall was nothing more than a temporary displacement of ground and she landed with the grace of someone trained to always get back up.

She had her knives ready.

He swung his bow and she trashed with her first knife. They each drew blood. She felt the ache from where his bow had met her face, splitting the skin at her cheekbone. She lashed out again but he caught her wrist in his hand, getting her to drop the knife. She punched him in the eye for that.

But the agony from her soul-glow intensified as his bruising face came into view. She struggled through it to throw her remaining knife at him, but he dodged, the blade just catching his bicep. A hairline of blood appeared, the same brilliant red as the light burning from his chest.

He nocked an arrow and aimed it at her heart.

“Don’t make me kill you, Red,” he whispered, air fogging up in front of his lips as the words left them. “Please don’t make me kill you.”

She spat, the glow from her chest showing blood mixed with the saliva. She met his eyes, felt the burn go wild and lunged at him. 

He loosed the arrow.

It missed.

But so did she.

 

**He put an arrow through my heart, and I don't mind it at all.**

 

Now she wondered, seven years later, resting her head on his lap, reading from an ancient novel written in her native tongue while he slept, head lulled back, throat exposed to nothing but brilliant sunshine in their New York apartment, if maybe that arrow hadn’t gone through her heart anyway. She nestled in closer, adjusting her book.

And who was she to complain about him taking the shot.


End file.
